Search Engine Optimization for Better Organic Rankings
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on September 26, 2012
Are you tired of paying companies for search engine optimization and continuing to find yourself on the third page of results? SEO is about more than throwing money at keywords (although buying your spot can be a part of a well-integrated optimization strategy). There are plenty of ways to ensure a well-placed organic ranking with search engines and, just like a well-integrated strategy should, they involve good quality content, cultivating inbound links, and having an easily navigable site. At RoryMartin.com, we know how important SEO is to conversions and click-through-rates. Here are a few things to remember when performing optimization on your site:
When it comes to content, make sure that your keywords are placed in the title of the piece or product page, and also in the headers. H1 tags are great indicators of what a page is about. Search spiders often crawl these first, and curate pages accordingly.
Some companies go a little overboard in this, and fill their pages with any and all keywords – related or not. This may earn you a penalty from Google; however, if it does lead search engine spiders to your site, it won’t necessarily attract living, breathing human beings. If you have ‘Toshiba Laptop’ in your title, and a potential customer finds that you only resell MacBooks, your conversions will drop. Your clients will be very disappointed – and possibly vocally so.
Try to make your content sound as if it was written by humans for humans, and work the keywords in naturally. You can also add a keyword or two into the URL of the page, without it appearing in the title. This will increase the likelihood that you come up in search results for that keyword, without having to force it into the title of a piece.
If you have a large website, or a site with lots of content, such as a frequently updated blog, then your users will want to navigate around it with ease. Search engine spiders are the same. Have you checked your website recently to make sure that all of your links are working, that they all reach the appropriate page, and that they are all tagged or categorized correctly? This is something that should be done frequently, especially if you are constantly adding new content and/or products. Both users and spiders will become frustrated and give up if they can’t easily find what they’re looking for. 404’s, 403’s – they are not your friends. Keep your links up-to-date.
We know that search engines rank sites according to their authority, which is why incoming links are so important. The more sites that link to your site using keyword-specific anchor text, the higher your site will rank as an authority on this text. Of course, generating links to your website takes a lot of work and relationship-building with other website owners or bloggers (along with producing the sort of content that others will want to link to in the first place). This off-page SEO is one of the hardest parts of Search Engine Optimization.
If you follow white-hat SEO, your website should naturally rise through the rankings. The added bonus: fellow website owners and bloggers are now aware of your site, and are more likely to promote it to their followers!
What’s your top tip when it comes to search engine optimization geared towards organic rankings?
Solve Your Customers’ Problems Through Search Engine Optimization
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on September 25, 2012
Search engine optimization is certainly one of the trickier beasts to handle on the internet, which is why we at RoryMartin.com work hard to help you improve your SEO, and implement search enginge optimization strategies which will result in increased customer conversions at your website.
How many times have you, frustratedly, typed a question into a search engine, rather than a search specific keyword? We’re not talking ‘Where are my keys?’ but more, ‘Why is my internet so slow?’ or ‘Why doesn’t this bike pump work with my tires?’ Many companies use their websites as a place to put the information which they want people to read, but only a few companies give a thought to what their customers might actually want to know.
People purchase products or hire services because want solutions to their problems. All good marketing creates an awareness of this problem in the potential customer’s life, and then offers the perfect solution – as far as they’re concerned. Most companies use this tactic in their advertising, but how can this be used for better search engine optimization?
Implementing this is a several stage process. You should already know the most popular search terms through which people arrive at your website, so it’s important to notice if any are of the ‘frustrated question’ type. Firstly, see if is this a question which your business was made to answer. If it is, then check which page this search leads to. Does this page have an explicit answer to this question? If it does, then congratulations! You can expect this person to have a positive view of your website, and your products or services. Hopefully, this will even lead to a conversion.
However, if the page doesn’t have an explicit answer to this question, when it could, then your site will achieve the opposite of the desired effect. The final stage in this implementation process is to either create new pages which directly answer the most common question searches, or to clearly add in the information which most people come to your site searching for.
What do you think of this as an SEO strategy? Have you already implemented something similar?
What Search Engine Marketing Can Do For Your Brand
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing on September 19, 2012
When was the last time that you invested in some search engine marketing for your business? If you think that all that was dealt with when you set up your website, then it might be time to gather up your colleagues and have a little chat.
Search engine marketing doesn’t stop once your website is set up, it’s an on-going process which everyone in your company can be a part of. In a world where link-building and social signals are a key part of boosting your company websites rankings, it seems strange that over half of most U.S companies actually block their employees access to social sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Why? Earlier this year we thought up seven solid tips for good SEO, one being to cultivate links with other sites. Well, what if the links were coming from inside the building?
As a part of a wider search engine marketing strategy, which includes link building outside of the company, it can be very beneficial to encourage employees in the building to talk about their work on social media sites, and even to blog about their work and research – with links back to the company site.
Of course you would want to keep a handle on the specifics, but developing a strategy like this – where potential customers feel as though they are getting to know (and coming to trust) more sides of the company than just the marketing arm – can do wonders for the visibility of your brand in search engine rankings. And with all the sites linking to each other, they’re only going to continue to become stronger.
Would you consider implementing a search engine marketing strategy like this at your workplace? How do you think it would benefit your brand?
Why Social Media Makes Marketing Easier
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on September 11, 2012
What if you could reach five hundred local customers in just a couple of minutes? What if you could click just ONE button, and watch the product orders flood in? These are just a couple of promises made about why social media is going to be great for your business, and the kicker is – they’re true.
If you have 500 (or more!) followers on Twitter, then you can easily write and share a tweet in a couple of minutes. When you have engaged readers of your blog and website, you just have to hit ‘Publish Post’ to alert your community to the new, awesome, item you have, that will improve their lives no end.
Long-time readers of social media advice might notice that we left out a couple of steps. In order to get 500+ local, relevant followers on Twitter, someone has to put in a concerted effort to make your fan base aware of your online presence. The same with creating that blogging community, or finding Fans for your Facebook page. Social Media makes it so much easier to share news and information, but it’s no longer a case of ‘If you build it, they will come.’
Social Media Marketing needs to be fully integrated into all other avenues of marketing
This includes print and tv marketing, if you want to see your marketing campaign achieve its full potential. If you’re a big enough brand, then maybe people will make the effort to search for you on Facebook or Twitter, but smaller companies will need to make it as easy and as clear as possible to potential customers where they can be found on-line.
Integrating social media into a print or tv marketing campaign need be no more taxing than adding in your Twitter handle where you already have your address and telephone number onto your next batch of catalogues or flyers. Use traditional marketing to pull people in, and engage them on social media to keep them interested in and aware of your brand.
Have you successfully used traditional print marketing in conjunction with social media marketing? How did it go?
How to Schedule your Social Media Updates
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Networking on September 7, 2012
Scheduling updates can be a contentious issue in the world of social media, and with good reason too. There are two schools of thought among social media consultants. On the one hand, social media is all about customer engagement – it’s called ‘social’ for a reason. Companies are expected to converse with their customers and clients, politely and publicly. On the other hand, social media is just another marketing tool to be used to get information out to the world. People don’t follow you because they want to chat, they’ve got friends for that. They follow businesses for specific information – offers, events, industry news. Just get the information to them when they’re online.
Of course, the reality is somewhere in the middle of these two theories. Followers and fans want information on current events, but they also want to let you know what they think, and the problems which they’re having – and they expect you to respond in a timely manner. Scheduling social media updates certainly has a place in a well-rounded social media strategy – the key is to use it wisely.
Good practice with scheduling updates is to take the time in the morning to consider what information needs to go out that day (or week). Craft a few brilliantly worded updates, and use a tool such as HootSuite or ViralHeat to schedule them. Take a look at which ones you think will generate the most engagement and write a note to yourself to check in around that time to monitor comments and mentions. This way, you don’t spend all day wondering when to tweet again and what to say, and there’s no need to religiously log in to Facebook and Twitter to respond to everything immediately. By doing your social media in chunks like this, you will save time throughout the day.
However, it pays to keep up with industry news and current events – especially if you’re attending them! Having scheduled updates which interrupt the live-tweeting of an event, or which are reporting on suddenly outdated news, will look strange to your followers and Fans, so it is still necessary to keep an eye on your future stream and make sure that it continues to be relevant.
A lot of companies only update their social media streams during business hours; when their employees are at work. This means that users likely check in to their accounts most often outside of business hours; when they are not at work. Perhaps they check Facebook over breakfast, and tweet on the train home. Scheduling social media updates outside of business hours is a great strategy for increasing the potential reach of your updates without going into overtime.
What do you think of scheduling updates as a social media strategy? Do you think that it takes the spontaneity out of the conversation, or do you see it as an intelligent response to a real need?
How Much do Social Signals Improve Page Rank
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on September 4, 2012
At RoryMartin.com we stress the importance of a fully-integrated social media strategy for your company’s branding. Social media improves customer relations, draws in potential new customers, and allows your company to discover where improvements can be made to your business, directly from your customers. Social media increases the trust that your current and potential clients have in your company, and increases the liklihood of positive and immediate referrals from customers to their friends and followers.
However, a recent article on the SEOmoz blog asks the question “Do Improved Social Signals Cause Improved Rankings?” which is clearly a contentious issue for many social media consultants! The comments range from skepticism, to outrage, to full-on agreement.
The keyword in this question about social signals is ’cause’. How do you determine the final result of social signals?
Many of you will already be saying to yourselves that you’ve seen your website, or certain pages, go up in page rankings after having a link tweeted by a few influential tweeters, but as the article says – correlation does not equal causation. It’s often true that after a week or so, once people have moved on to the next fresh and exciting piece of content and have stopped tweeting and retweeting your piece, that you see search engine rankings drop once again.
The Freshness Factor
Some social media experts attribute this to a ‘freshness factor’ – the idea that search engines prefer new(er) content. Some say that during the period in which a link is being retweeted, it will also be linked to from websites. This may even be due to people who have their tweets displayed on their website. If they link to you in a tweet, it will appear on their website – but only until their new tweets push yours off.
It’s a complicated piece, and a complicated argument to make! When we see a number of social signals, or see an influential social signal coming into a website, and then see the page rankings shoot up, we want to attribute one to the other – whether this is true or not.
There are a couple of important takeaways from this in-depth research on social signals.
The first is that regardless of how many influential people you can ask to share a link, most people will only share good quality content. It may even be that what causes both the shares and the improved page rank is the quality of the piece. Focus on creating top quality content and your piece will garner a wide range of social signals, and move up the page rankings.
The second takeaway is that whether or not Google follows Twitter or Facebook links and uses them to attribute better page rankings to sites, social signals are still important. Having an integrated social media strategy means that more people will see your new piece sooner than not. This then leads to, not only social shares, but also links from websites – links which we know do affect SEO. The more people who view the piece, the more people are likely to create SEO-affecting links.
At RoryMartin.com we work to create integrated social media strategies for companies which involve top quality content that is infinitely shareable. What do you think of this research?
Sales and Social Media Marketing: What’s the ROI
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on August 28, 2012
Here’s something we’ve touched upon before at RoryMartin.com, but which people quite often seem to forget: social media is not the place for sales. Saying this straight can cause businesses to throw up their hands and exclaim “What’s the point?”, but hear us out. Social media is first and foremost a marketing tool – and your social media marketing strategy should reflect that. Even people who use social media to tweet about their breakfast are still thinking about how they’d like the world to think of them – although they probably don’t have plans to become ‘Breakfast Food Consultants’. Social media can be used to build brand awareness and positive customer (read: potential customer!) engagement. Of course, social media can be used to make sales, but if your updates are chock-full of SALE! And OFFER! people will quickly switch off.
One of the reasons why social media is not a sales tool is because people don’t go to check their accounts thinking ‘I’d like to purchase something today, I wonder what that will be?’ Social media catches people far earlier in the buying process than, say, a storefront window. Followers and fans may not even be aware that they need your product or service, let alone want to purchase it right then and there.
However, this doesn’t mean that your followers and fans will never purchase a product or service from you via social media, but the process is a longer one. Social media marketing is a long-term sales strategy. Sending out five tweets in a row about your latest OFFERS and SALES everyday won’t make you any friends, but providing constant and consistent advice and information about your products and services will. Users typically turn to social media for entertainment and information, so give it to them!
A new Follower or Fan may not immediately make a purchase from you, the same way that someone in your internet store or on your shop floor might, but over time they will come to trust and respect your authority in your business niche. Then, when they do decide it’s time to get a glazier in, they’ll turn to a name they remember – yours.
Customers who discovered your services on social media are very high value after the sale as well. They can, and often will, turn to their accounts to praise, or demonise, your business. Make it easy for them to give a positive review, and that will influence their followers, and yours. With people turning to peer reviews before making their purchasing decisions nowadays, this is the true ROI when it comes to social media – positive feedback and an increased sphere of influence.
If you’d like to hear more about how social media can benefit your business, then email Rory Martin today.
7 Solid Tips to Boost Your SEO from RoryMartin.com
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on August 23, 2012
1. Know your starting statistics
When implementing any strategy, it pays to know where you’re starting from, so that you can easily see if rankings and conversions have improved at any point in your SEO journey. This document can be as simple as you like; even a handwritten notebook will let you immediately spot increases (and decreases) in statistics such as conversions and inbound links.
2. Create solid, good quality content
The perceived Holy Grail of content is to create something which goes viral, but as a long-term strategy it’s better to create solid, good quality content on a regular basis, than occasionally put something extraordinary out there, and bulk up your website with mediocre content in between. Like EdgeRank with Facebook, if you put out something less than great, people aren’t going to be that keen to share and promote it, so in between viral episodes, you’re more likely to lose followers and alienate your audience.
3. Keep an eye on what’s topical
What’s trending on Twitter? What are other people in your field talking about? That viral video, does it have any themes which you could work from? While we don’t suggest you hurry something just to piggyback on the current top trending topic, it’s a good idea to see what’s creating a buzz during the week, and see if anything which you do can relate to that. Stay mindful of your long-term plans and company branding though!
4. Cultivate relationships with other sites
This goes hand-in-hand with tip #3. If your link-builder is out there every day, sourcing websites for links, these bloggers and journalists and website owners are going to prefer to link to a site which is consistently putting out good content. Here is a fantastic piece on why many link-building strategies fail: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-link-building-strategies-fail
5. Check your road map
Once you implement a new idea, or build that relationship link with a site or person, check your statistics to see what the relationship does for you. Are you finding that your traffic is slowly but surely increasing, but you’re not ranking any higher? Find out what’s causing that, and fix it. Remember that the point of SEO isn’t only to boost your rankings, but also to increase conversions. How are these statistics looking?
6. Don’t hang out in bad neighborhoods
Search engines can easily pick up on linkfarms, and other such sites, and blacklist them. There is almost no security or surety in purchasing links from sites like these, as they could be disregarded by search engines, or even cast a negative light on the sites which they are linking too, as well. Stick to building connections and writing good quality content for yourself.
7. Make your actions clear
Once all of this traffic has arrived at your site, you want to convert visits into customers. Make sure that your site is easily navigable so that your newly interested audience can immediately do what you want them to do on the site. Your social media profiles need to be obvious too, so that these visitors can quickly connect with you, and share what a great job you’re doing of being you!
We at RoryMartin.com hope that these seven tips improve your SEO and rankings. If you’d like more advice contact our experts today for a free estimate.
Five Ways Companies Get Social Media Wrong
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on August 20, 2012
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Social Media is not the place for the hard sell
It is incredibly common for small businesses to merge Sales with Marketing and spend all their time on Social Media trying to push people to buy, buy, buy. Unfortunately, this hard-sell strategy doesn’t work. Most social media users don’t scroll through their timelines wondering what they can buy that day – users are looking for entertainment and information. Provide value and your potential customers will keep coming back to you.
Social media is about building relationships and growing trust. So when your followers are wondering where they want to shop, or who they want to have a business relationship with, your company name crops up first.
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Social media isn’t all about self-promotion
People will follow your company because they want to know what your business is doing and when your next event or what your next special offer is, but remember that party where you got stuck with the guy who wouldn’t stop telling you about his speedboat, and never asked any questions?
You may feel like that update that doesn’t have a link to your site or product is a wasted update, but imagine the valuable feedback you could receive from your followers by asking a couple of questions a day about your brand image, latest product, or most recent conference. Thank the responders by name, and you might just have a customer for life!
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You don’t have to be on all of the platforms
At RoryMartin.com we keep on top of all the social media platforms in order to best advise our clients, and from our research we can tell you this: some platforms are more appropriate than others for certain businesses. Rather than spread your limited budget over ten social media accounts, pick two or three which already appeal to your target demographic and focus your efforts there.
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Don’t try and keep up with the big brands
Just like in tip #3 – as a small to medium-sized business, you have limited resources for marketing or promotions. Huge brands can afford to host big-ticket giveaways to promote their new products or services, but giving away a heap of iPads might be outside of your budget.
Instead, think creatively and work out something relevant to your business – find something that your target market will appreciate and which showcases your company’s particular skills.
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Social media isn’t “free” or “additional”
Social media is not something that you can just tack onto regular marketing campaigns, or entrust completely to the new intern. Many companies that treat social media in this way are the first to complain that social media is useless. Social media should be fully incorporated with marketing strategies from the beginning, with an employee whose job description requires that they spend a certain amount of time actioning these strategies. With dedicated time, and money going towards social media strategies, the improvement in ROI should be immediately noticeable.
If you don’t have the manpower to administer your own social media marketing you may consider partnering with a company that specializes in social media strategy – like the team at RoryMartin.com. With a little time and patience, your business can attack the social media vertical with success.
Have you noticed any of these pitfalls in your own social media strategy? Do you have any other social media mistakes to add to this list?
Create an Eye-Catching Site with Innovative Web Design
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on August 15, 2012
At RoryMartin.com, we put a lot of time and effort into web design and development, because we recognize the importance of the website as your introduction to the world. With people using the web for everything nowadays – research, communication, shopping, networking – a website must work hard to attract and keep an audience.
The perfect website should be unique, yet recognizable
This means that the site should be different enough from its competitors to be memorable and exciting, but that traditional features which appear on many sites should be in obvious and expected places. Have you noticed that Login buttons on social media sites are almost always in the top right? People will naturally gravitate to that area to log in or sign up to your site, and if it’s not there, they will become frustrated at having to search for it.
The perfect website should be easy to navigate
Web users expect to be able to achieve most things on-line in two or three clicks. If they search ‘Comedy nights’ and your website comes up, but listings aren’t immediately available in two clicks (or less!) they will quickly head somewhere else – and this is bad news for your Bounce Rate. A good website should also be completely navigable from within the site; this means that a user should never have to click their browser’s back button! These are the kinds of issues which usually asrise during the testing process, and are quickly resolved.
The perfect website should be eye-catching, but not overwhelming
When you want your website to stand out, it can be tempting to make the headers even bigger, use lots of different fonts and throw photos at it like confetti. Users who arrive at a site like this quite literally will not know where to look! At RoryMartin.com, we like to keep things slick and simple.
Against this background, a different header font or announcement photo will have a greater impact on audience attention.
The perfect website should be clear about its purpose
Do you design stained glass windows, wash windows, install double-glazing, or sell glass paints? When a web user can reach your site by searching very common terms, it pays to have a tagline which makes the purpose of your site clear. This might increase the bounce rate of visitors to the site, but it will also prevent people associating your site (and services) with being a waste of time!
The perfect website should be up-to-date
Most sites will have a copyright notice in their footer. If people are going to trust your site, then this copyright certainly needs to be up-to-date! Another way of appearing up to date is to have a regularly scheduled blog, or social media accounts displayed on the page, which are updated every day, or near enough. This immediately lets people know that someone is on the other end of this website, and that it’s easy to get in touch with them.
At RoryMartin.com, we put a lot of time and energy into web design and development, in order to build amazing sites that mirror your business strategy. Talk to one of our Seattle web design experts today about what we can do for you.
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